I always struggled with Reiki. I loved the energy; believed in it completely, but there was something not quite right about the information I was taught about it. I could never put my finger on it, however. There were so many ‘rules’ that the system felt restrictive and I never really ‘got it’. I never understood the symbols. They were just images on paper that never made any real sense.

 I received my first Reiki Masters, (from Antoinette Everts) but we were both taught that now we were obliged to go out and teach it. That was the deal. But neither of us had any desire to do that. We both felt this was our personal journey. I wanted to learn Reiki for my own development, and healing, as did she.

Needless to say, I did not rush out to train anyone. But I did practice the attunement process;, attuning myself many times as a healing process. I learned many things through practicing Reiki but there was always something missing. I never felt connected to the symbols. They felt superficial. It was only when my guides began to teach me the Gaia Method Earthways, that I began to understand Reiki. When we are first learning about Reiki, we are not able to really ‘feel’ the energies. We are taught on an intellectual level, how to understand Reiki and the symbols, but Reiki is not an intellectual process, it is energetic and sensory.

On top of that, all of my subsequent attunements were also focused on the Indian 7-chakra system, and this too never sat right with me. Intuitively, the only ‘centres’ I ever wanted to work with were the brow centre, the heart, and the belly. On top of that, I could heal with my ‘seeing’, and my breath, but I had no idea that this too was Reiki – until I found a book by Bronwen and Frans Stein.  Suddenly everything made complete sense! I wasn’t rejecting Reiki, I was doing it the way it was originally meant to be used! What a revelation! 

Interestingly, it was while I was receiving the Gaia Method Earthways system that I began to understand how the Reiki system worked. Until I had learned how to connect to the earth, I wasn’t fully using Reiki. at all. Without all of the Reiki attunements I have donw over the years, and the ensuing energetic growth, I would never have been ready to receive the Gaia Method Earthways in the first place! In fact, when I received the first symbol, I thought it was a new Gaia Reiki, which I was not interested in doing. I thought there were enough Reiki modalities out there already and who was I to add another? It turned out to be a completely separate system and yet traditional and non-traditional Reiki got me to the point ob being able to receive the system.

One of the issues I had was with the Reiki symbols. Trough the Reiki book, I found that they were not quite what I had been taught. There was nearly too much information given for the symbols, when their function was in fact much simpler. It was during a Gaia Method Earthways class I was holding in Winchester that I finally understood the SeiHeiKi symbol, fifteen years after receiving my first Reiki attunement.

 It was during a session with one of the students that I finally found a connection to the SHK. My guides showed me its effect and elemental use. It appeared as a large wave of water, superimposed on the symbol. When I placed it in the student’s energy field it created ripples in her watery, emotional layer, which , after a few soft ripples, became a smooth surface, like a lake. After this, a past-life trauma emerged, where she lived in the Mediterranean during the Trojan period.

I saw that the symbol was a cleansing wave of energy, opening up the emotional body to heal issues within it.  It was that simple. I like things simple, and usable. Too much ‘mind’ energy gets in my way.  At the time, however, I wondered if this is what Usui was doing when he introduced the symbols to his students. Was it related to the elements too? What was also interesting is that the room I was using was being rented from a Network Chiropractor, whom I had been receiving treatments from for a number of years. His Practice is called the Healing Wave of Winchester, so I imagine that it was no coincidence that the SHK symbol ‘showed’  itself here!

A few months later, I did a Reiki Master’s individual training with another student. As part of his practice, he attuned me to all three levels. During the attunement, at the first level, I could feel a connection in my belly (Earth Dan Tien) and a little heat in my hands. For the second attunement, the heat and feeling in my belly and hands increased with a ‘mini’ conflagration! The third degree brought an anchoring of the energy into the Hara line, with an increased awareness of my divinity. 

I had never seen the effects of an attunement before. But what I found the most interesting was how the Master’s degree is designed to anchor the energy in the Hara and the lower tan Tien;’ the centre that connects us to the earth. We then become the medium between Heaven and Earth.

I also realised over the years, and through the Stein book, that Reiki was designed to be a personal healing path, designed to be lived, not just practised. I could relax! There was no longer any pressure to be perfect, or to live up to some unattainable standard and obligation. No law stated that being attuned to the Master level, obliged me to pass it on.

And I discovered that Reiki does not work that way either. It takes time for the bodies and the energy channels to be ready to pass on the energies. For the first few years I taught no-one, but then one day someone asked me to give them an attunement. I was terrified, but I intuitively understood that I was ready to pass on the first degree. “When the teacher is ready, the student appears!”  

After a few more years of intense personal healing and growth, a student approached me and asked me to pass the second attunement. A couple of years after that I was asked to pass the Master’s degree. I knew each time that I was ready, because the student would appear. It was not going to happen until I was ready and I consciously had no control over that. My Soul/Entity-Self was in the driving seat, and I learned to trust her judgement.

I received many attunements over the years in a few Reiki modalities, but they all felt like I was adding more energy to myself and more keys. I never consciously worked with any of them, but they all added to my growth and the ability of my energy-field to channel greater amounts of energy. Without having gone through this process of Reiki and Ascension I would never have been able to do the Gaia Method Earthways at all. And Ascension? That turned out to be a ‘Descension’, the anchoring of my body to the earth plane and the world of nature’s energies! Not what I was expecting, but what a gift … traumatic as it was at the time! 

My personal healing remains a huge part of my life and the Reiki energy that flows through me is the energy that supports that process.  If you want to be the best energy worker you can be, your personal healing is vital. How can you heal the world if you cannot heal yourself?

The understanding of world issues is through the healing and understanding of our own. We all learn through experience. This is why we travel the path on foot and not a chauffeur-driven car!